Your decades of experience have made you jaded. 

2.Does anyone have experience investing in or house hacking in Danbury?

I run a MTR out of my primary bedroom and would be happy to connect and chat about your plans and what my experiences have been. 

But my experience over the last 10 years of building new homes is that NOTHING comes down might stay the same but will rise almost annually Like Cement always goes up in Jan. 

Consider starting small, like with a duplex, to get experience.

There is so substitute for experience.

Is anyone investing in texas (in long-term rentals) that knows about this and has experience with this?

But I would remain open to long-term rental as an option as this seems like a more stable option in terms of income, again this may be my inexperience talking.However, I have always  been somewhat risk averse and investing in real estate is always a big venture, in my opinion/experience, in terms of capital.

There's a lot of pitfalls there that you're probably not going to be aware of without experience. 

That is part of the problem with a lot of companies (I am not knocking insula as dont have all the info/facts just stating how the business works), they engage brokers to get them loans and the brokers collect a small fee. unfortunately many of the brokers may be similar to real estate wholesalers - have little to no experience.